There was a 25% diffrence in what President Obama wanted to spend on defense from what Mitt Romney wanted , but if you phrase it just right you can minimise the perception of the hugeness of the diffrence.
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/columnists/2012-11-03/story/political-fears-real-or-imaginedFear: “Obama’s re-election scares me to death for one key reason: national security. … To force the sequester to take place in January because Republicans won’t agree to ‘punish the rich’ with higher taxes will cripple our military by taking away major funding at a time of greatest need.”
G.T. Harrell, Jacksonville
The sequester refers to automatic cuts that will go into effect in January because Congress couldn’t agree on spending cuts. That means about $500 billion in military cuts over the decade, as reported in media outlets. These are in addition to the $487 billion in defense reductions in Obama’s budget and billions of earlier cuts.
In his new book, “The Price of Politics,” Bob Woodward shows clearly that defense sequestration came out of Obama’s White House, PolitiFact.com found. The specter of the unpalatable sequester was supposed to get Democrats and Republicans to work together. It didn’t work.
But even though no one wanted the sequester, Congress passed the bill.
Romney has promised to increase military spending to 4 percent of the gross domestic product.
Joshua Gordon, policy director of The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that educates the public about federal budget issues, said Romney is not being realistic when he says he can increase defense spending, cut taxes, and not reduce Social Security or Medicare benefits over the next 10 years.
Gordon also said that Obama’s budget plan will result in fairly large deficits even if he cuts defense spending by about $500 billion over the next 10 years.
The bottom line, Gordon said, “is that the military will function well under either scenario. The difference in the Romney and Obama plans amounts to about 1 percent of GDP over the next 10 years.”
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/columnists/2012-11-03/story/political-fears-real-or-imagined#ixzz2DlbjyIBh
